Alright, after numerous people have hinted over time that the Cafe could be a prettier place, we are slowly caving in. By slowly, we mean sloooooooooowly. In other words, we're not looking to upset the general makeup of the site, but it's a fact that many of the people in this forum can make prettier logos with both hands tied than "a circus clown flying the space shuttle" (that would be me) could ever dream of. Generally, we want to keep the colors and the idea that the Cafe is a lit up place in a dark environment (with neon signs and all), but it wouldn't be too bad if the neon signs would actually be recognizable as such.

In short, we're looking for two things:#1 New neon signs for the top of the page as well as the navigation menus. They should be approximately the same size as what we have now - a few pixels more or less don't matter, but the navigation menu in particular shouldn't be much taller than it is now.#2 A graphic logo that ties in with the rest of the layout, as well as the neon idea. The logical thing would be a coffee cup of some sort, but that doesn't mean that other ideas are entirely impossible.

Other than with regular sigs or avatars, there are copyright issues to consider here. For one, if you do take the trouble to help us out here (thanks, thanks, thanks ) you'd have to grant us ownership/copyright to that work so we can do with it whatever we want, including but not limited to altering it for future Cafes, printing it on mugs or T-shirts, tattooing it on our foreheads, or swapping it with a flying carpet on the black market in Istanbul (sorry about that, just trying to be realistic - otherwise we can't use it). Also, I guess it's not possible to use other copyrighted material in this, so the logo would have to be generic, not quite sure about the font for the written stuff (that's probably less tricky, especially since many fonts are public domain, but there are some which may be problematic). Either way, you'd have to give us the opportunity to reproduce what you did (the effects and all) for the purposes mentioned above.

I'm aware that all of this may not sound too inviting, but it comes even worse. Remember that we've had our old layout for nearly 4 years now, and we're an extremely conservative bunch - so in the end, there's no 100% certainty that we will even change the looks of the site at all. That's why this thread is a sticky, it may take months or even years before something happens. Last but not least, let me grab the opportunity to say thank you to all the nice people who have offered to do something in the past - if you're still serious about it, the time is now, so be our guests!